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Texas has been the starting point for a lot of iconic brands. Whataburger, H-E-B and Buc-ee’s are a few modern behemoths that come to mind. But Texas as a place to start a business goes back way further than that. W.F. Strong has the story of a man named Connie who forged a global chain from humble beginnings.
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The full transcript of this episode of Stories from Texas is available on the KUT & KUTX Studio website. The transcript is also available as subtitles or captions on some podcast apps.
WF Strong: Connie was born on Christmas Day in 1887 in San Antonio, that would be San Antonio in New Mexico, which was pretty much a one horse town compared to San Antonio Texas back then as a teenager. Connie worked in his father’s general store for $5 a month in school. He said that he excelled in two subjects, math and Spanish at home. His mother taught him the power of prayer. His father taught him that there was only one word that would lead to success, and that word was work. In time, he learned that praying hard and working hard needed a third element, dreaming big. During World War I, Connie enlisted and served in France. Sadly, his father died while he was in Paris. It was just a couple of months after Armistice Day. Connie’s mother sent him a telegram. Father killed, auto accident. He returned home to a small town that was getting smaller, and his father’s businesses were struggling or failing. While overseas, Connie had dreamed of becoming a banker, or maybe even buying a bank. His mother knew he couldn’t make that happen in a small, poor town with a dwindling population. She told him to find his own frontier, saying, if you want to launch big ships, you have to go where the water is deep. Connie found out soon enough that that meant Texas. A great friend of his father’s who was dying sent for him and said, go to Texas, Connie, and you’ll make your fortune there. He would later say it was the single most important bit of advice he had received in his career. Connie had $5,000 from savings and some investors he could count on. He wanted to buy a bank. He went first to Wichita Falls and he found a bank that was for sale for $75,000. He wired the owner and asked for details. And the owner came back with a higher sale price of $80,000. The oil boom in Texas was pushing prices higher. Connie couldn’t meet that new price. And that turned out to be lucky. That bank failed two years later. Connie moved on to Fort Worth, where he had no luck. And then he took a train to Cisco, Texas. The town was full of hordes of men seeking their fortune in black gold. Connie couldn’t find a bank for sale there either. He decided he’d check into a hotel to collect his thoughts, but he couldn’t find a room. In one hotel, he realized the owner was renting rooms for eight hours at a time. He was collecting on three sleep shifts a day. Cleverly working his way into a conversation with the owner, Connie discovered that the man wanted desperately to get out of the hotel business. He wanted to be in oil. Connie asked him why he would want to give up a hotel that makes money hand over fist. He said, I’m making only thousands year. When I could be making millions in oil. Connie asked him how much he wanted for the hotel and he said $50,000. After negotiations, Connie got him down to 40,000, but he had only one week to close the deal. He had half of it from investors and borrowed the rest from a bank that was happy to lend some of the oil money it was flush with. When Connie signed loan documents with the bank, he signed not with his nickname, but with his formal name, Conrad. And his last name you will recognize, Hilton. The Mobley Hotel in Cisco, Texas was the first Hilton Hotel. He said that night he dreamed of Texas wearing the chain of Hilton Hotels. That dream came true in a much bigger way than he dreamed that night. Today, Hilton Hotel’s number 9,000 across 143 countries, and it all started in Cisco Texas. For many years, Conrad Hilton kept a picture of the Waldorf Astoria in New York on his desk. He considered it the finest hotel in the world. He wanted it. In 1949, 30 years after buying the Mowgli in Cisco, he bought the Waldorfer Astoria on the famed Park Avenue. That evening, he went to St. Patrick’s Cathedral to do as his mother had taught him, to pray in gratitude. But he said he didn’t pray in thanks for his new hotel. It was in gratitude for living in a country where he had quote, the all-American right to dream with the actual possibility of seeing that dream come true. I’m WF Strong. These are stories from Texas. Some of them are true.
This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.
